


Terrifying

by thewhiterose3



Category: Leverage
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhiterose3/pseuds/thewhiterose3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardison and Parker, his two resident brilliant freaks of nature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terrifying

It terrifies Eliot sometimes how much he trusts Nate. How much he trusts even a blackout drunk Nate to get them all out, to get them all through this alive and victorious. He trusts Nate to know their limits, trusts Sophie to know Nate’s limits to keep him in check. Trusts them with his own life and more importantly, even more life-alteringly terrifying is that he trusts them with the lives of the people he’s come to care about the most.

Hardison and Parker. Holy mother of… how far has he fallen, come, changed. Everything has changed. Hardison and Parker, his two resident brilliant freaks of nature. The things that they can each do, accomplish – it astounds him on a daily basis. Every damn time Nate assigns him something more and more impossible, more and more completely and utterly undoable in the time frame allowed, Hardison just does it. He comes through every damn time. He has landed two damn planes with not a single hour of actual pilot experience. Broken more unbreakable systems and if he can’t break them, he can fool them. Give them enough time to get in, get out, or at least mostly out in enough time to make it happen. The kid almost single handedly rigged an election. He took control of a country with a few strategically placed emails. He’d never tell him this, but he’s just young and utterly brilliant and sometimes Elliot looks at him and wonders where he’d be if he wasn’t here with them. What he could accomplish good and bad with the right or wrong motivation. But that always makes Elliot picture Alec with a gun to his head, trapped in a metal box, buried deep, and he just, just never wants to leave his side. Wants to constantly stand guard watching those nimble fingers fly across the keyboard, that satisfied smirk and crow of victory when the orphaned computer geek breaks the entire world of a corrupt millionaire who thought he could get away with murder. Eliot wants to stand in the shadows standing guard so Alec can continue to be young and free and innocent and all the things that Elliot isn’t.

And then there’s Parker. That brain of hers, holy shit. She’s simultaneously got the brain of a seven year old boy and a hardened cynic with a lifetime of experience. She expects nothing and is delighted by nearly everything. Elliot sees her sometimes just staring at them, committing them to memory as if she entirely expects them all to just disappear, as if there is a small part of her that still doesn’t believe that this “more than a team” isn’t just something she’s dreamed up. Something she’s imagined because she wants so badly to be a part of something. Wants to forget the survival instincts of her youth and just feel safe. Parker’s one of those kids who somehow has gotten it stuck in that damaged head of hers that she just doesn’t get to have a family, that maybe she’s so weird so wrong in some way that she doesn’t deserve one. And that image, of Parker alone and waiting for her mentor dude, starved for attention and watching him walk away, back to his own real family, a family that she doesn’t get to be a part of. It makes him want to hit things, hit people, hit that jerk who made her feel that way. He just, sometimes Elliot just wants to sit Parker down and indulge her, introduce her to the Muppets and Saturday morning cartoons from his youth, to plop her down between him and Hardison with bowls of cereal at least once every week for years. To prove permanence and preserve innocence and rewrite some of those pathways in her brain that say that feeling is hard, feeling at all should be avoided because they’re all just going to leave you anyway. The family, the caring, the love is all just a dream, a wonderful wonderful dream. But this dream isn’t going away anytime soon.

He wants to never let either of them out of his sight for long enough that anyone could hurt them. Especially lately. Lately when it seems that every other con, one of them is trapped or crying or in pain. And it sets off every protective instinct he’s ever harbored, ever pushed down and pretended he didn’t have, or pretended only existed to charm, for the con. But its real, all too real. And so he ushers them over to his place, cooks them elaborate meals they’ll never fully appreciate, but will love nonetheless. Cooks them hearty meals that will hopefully balance out Parker’s subsistence solely on cereal and chocolate and Hardison’s orange soda and gummy frogs obsession. Feeds them, eats with them, forces them to help him clean up as they playfully splash each other in the sink and never dry the dishes quite right. Lets them tuck him between them as Hardison sets up a ridiculous Disney movie on his laptop that Parker will be sure to adore and he and Hardison will pretend not to quote.

He will grumble and complain about personal space as Parker will curl herself into his side, but knows that this configuration works the best, with him in the middle. Being in the middle freaks Parker out, tangled up and boxed in she never really relaxes. And then Hardison always needs to reach forward and tinker with the laptop or his phone or any other number of devices he has on him, like if he doesn’t touch some piece of technology at least once every five minutes, he starts going through withdrawl, getting twitchy. And so Parker curls into him in a way he’ll never call snuggling to her face, knows it’ll come out wrong, loves her complete and utter looseness, that lack of flight instinct too much. Hardison pretends he doesn’t like the closeness, starts out with a good six inches of space between them. But within five minutes of lights out, movie starting, he’s right there, plastered to Eliot’s other side. A warm, slouched weight touching from shoulder to thigh.

And these are the times that Eliot likes best, when he can see them both in his peripheral vision. Can smell and feel, could so easily reach over to press a kiss to Parker’s head if he dared. All of his senses placated, attuned to what has become his two favorite people in the world. And he loves it and he hates it and it scares the shit out of him because he never expected to have this. He never expected to want this, is not sure the wanting would have even come close to the reality.

**Author's Note:**

> So very fluffy, but I just can't help it because I love them so very much. These three make the damn show. So very wonderful. Okay, enough with the oozing love, back to writing ridiculousness.
> 
> Unbeta'd. Both criticism and love is welcome and cherished.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be, just play with 'em, blah blah woof woof.


End file.
